


forget the horror here

by chalmskinn



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-War, Sexuality Crisis, Sick Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-18 22:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7332931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chalmskinn/pseuds/chalmskinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Ain’t you goin’ out with Maggie tonight? Can’t let your hair look like that, what will everyone think has happened to Bucky Barnes?” He turned onto his side and unbuttoned his shirt, struggling with where he’d placed the buttons in completely the wrong places. “I can see the papers now, ‘Brooklyn Lothario Beat by Heat’, and there’ll be a little picture of you all alone at the dance hall, your hair all limp and your face all sad.”</i>
</p><p>The flu does not stop for heat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	forget the horror here

The evening was dry and hot, and the pomade in his hair had run down the back of his neck. Steve was sick. Bucky cancelled his date with Margie that night. They were to go to the dance hall that night, he’d shined his shoes and ironed his suit using Mrs Cohen’s ancient and heavy flat iron as payment for his cupboard repair. He’d shaved, and he’d tidied the apartment, just in case. But Steve was still recovering from his recent bout of flu, and while he was feeling better in himself, and getting his colour back, he still looked like a wilting flower. So Bucky couldn’t leave, and that was that.

His floppy blond hair was still stuck in a sweaty tangle, and his stomach was looking more concave than usual, though he had managed an entire bowl of Bucky’s mother’s broth this afternoon. Bucky couldn’t leave him, asleep, draped across the springy, worn mattress on the floor, looking like a drowned Percy Shelley, arm thrown across his body and thin white sheet keeping his feverish body modest. (Though the single, bright pink nipple left uncovered by Steve’s thin arm was something that often kept Bucky awake at night, confused and hard). He did look like a sculpture, and if Bucky had the same talent as Steve did with the charcoals, he’d go to town on the thick pages of Steve’s sketchbook.

The window to the fire escape was open, letting the humid air into the stuffy apartment, and Bucky climbed out, leaving the window ajar, just as to allow his arm under to let him back in. He hummed a Billie Holiday number as he lit his cigarette, and exhaled the smoke into the alley, waving toward Mrs Cohen who was taking a small bag of trash out to the large dumpster. She stared up at him through the thick twilight, eyes squinting behind her thick spectacles.

“James, were you not going out with that girl this evening? Why did you iron your clothes if you’re gonna sit on the fire escape in your vest?” She tutted loudly, her disapproval echoing through the alleyway. “Are you just taking advantage of my old age? Using my good will all for nothing? Young men used to have-“

Bucky flicked ash off the railing, and called down, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, “Nah, Mrs Cohen, I saw Margie earlier, and I explained that Stevie’s still got the flu, and someone needs’a take care of him. We’re goin’ next week, when Steve’s better, and Margie’s gonna bring one of her friends so he ain’t alone.” He chuckled, “I’d never use you, Mrs Cohen, you’re my number one girl.” She beamed up at him, glasses reflecting the glow of the orange street lamp. Her face then fell into a scowl, and Bucky felt his breath hitch.

She pointed her tiny index finger up at him, and shook her head, threat in her beady little eyes. “What about your mother? Where does she come? Respect! Young men used to have respect, James Buchanan Barnes. Go see your mother!” He felt it redundant to tell her he’d seen her only five hours previous, and he waved at her fleeting figure with a roll of the eyes and a snort. He took a drag of his cigarette and stared out to the street until he felt the heat and the ash near his knuckles, and he threw the dying cigarette to the ground, the static air putting out the light before it hit the concrete floor.

Fingers touched the base of his neck, and he whipped around with a jolt. Steve took a step back and looked down at his long fingers, sticky with melted pomade, and his face curled into a grim expression, looking up to Bucky for explanation. His voice was still hoarse, “When did your sweat start to be thick, Buck? I think we should-“ He coughed. “Use some’a that money you save up for when I get sick, and take you down the doctors.” He took a shallow breathe, “Can’t be healthy, can it really.” Bucky chuckled and gently pushed Steve toward the window, smirking at his haphazardly thrown on clothes, deep creases on his usually immaculate pants, and a poorly buttoned shirt. He poked him in the leg again, and he climbed back into the apartment with a dramatic sigh. “Alright, alright, I’m in. Don’t break quarantine, I get the deal, Buck. I’ll go back to the perfect patient act in a sec.”

Bucky climbed in after him, and closed the window halfway, hoping for an eventual evening breeze. “My hair melted, you little punk. Why d’you think I’m sitting in my vest?” He bent over and picked up the chipped bowl he’d put his mother’s soup in for Steve, scowling at the mirepoix sticking to the base of the dish. “My ma spends hours every week cutting these carrots, and celery, and onion, and you leave it? The disrespect is outta control, Stevie, relearn your manners.”

Steve blew the thick piece of hair out of his face that hung in his eye, and fanned his damp face with his left hand, flopping back onto the mattress. “Who did I learn ‘em off of?” Bucky put the bowl in the sink, filled it with water, and let it soak, getting a cloth out of the cupboard, and dampening it. “Ain’t you goin’ out with Maggie tonight? Can’t let your hair look like that, what will everyone think has happened to Bucky Barnes?” He turned onto his side and unbuttoned his shirt, struggling with where he’d placed the buttons in completely the wrong places. “I can see the papers now, ‘Brooklyn Lothario Beat by Heat’, and there’ll be a little picture of you all alone at the dance hall, your hair all limp and your face all sad.”

He wiped at the back of his neck with the cloth, and turned to face Steve’s mischievous face, leaning on the counter. “Shut it, you brat. And it’s Margie, she goes to typing school and has blonde hair.” He doesn’t add that her eyes were a blue to rival Steve’s, her lips were the pink of watermelon, her height only to his shoulder, and her structure dainty like a fae - breasts flat, and legs long. Steve, his eyes closed, raised an eyebrow, “She’s a doll, Steve, face like Vivien Leigh.” Her nose wasn’t large and misshapen enough for Bucky, however. Her face was perfect, porcelain shaped dream. Dull. Bucky smiled. He wrung the cloth out over the sink and ran the tap over it, washing out the pomade and getting it sufficiently damp again. “Sit up, I can feel your fever from over here. You ain’t gonna get better if you overheat, are you?” Steve rolled his eyes, and pulled his body up slowly, shoulders slumping forward, shirt hanging from his slight frame.

A weak arm reached out toward Bucky as he approached Steve, and then he rolled his eyes, sitting beside Steve on the mattress. “I can do it, Buck. You’ve done enough.” Bucky sighed, and tugged at Steve’s shirt, pulling it gently down his arms, and letting it pool around his hips. “I mean it, you don’t have to, Bucky, I don’t want you to get sick.” Bucky placed the damp cloth against the first bump in Steve’s spine, and felt the man shiver in response.

“I ain’t gonna get sick from getting the sweat offa you. Plus, your arms, no matter how long they look, aren’t gonna reach back here, are they?” He asked as he ran the cloth down his spine. Steve had his eyes closed, and a slight blush had appeared on his cheeks. His hand moved in circles across the small plane of skin, and his brow furrowed in concentration. “Since I cancelled my date, how ‘bout I read you the paper later? I don’t think much has happened since you last picked a paper up, but it’s always nice to see.” Steve’s head lolled to the right as Bucky ran the cloth across his left flank, head shooting back up when the cloth ghosted over his hipbones that peaked out slightly from his too-big pants.

He coughed, and Bucky’s blue eyes looked up at him through his thick black lashes. “Heard the King of England’s gonna be in New York. On the radio.” Bucky nodded, “‘Spose you’d heard at work. Interesting though.” Steve’s cheeks were ablaze as the cloth passed across his hardened nipples. He turned to look out of the window, and Bucky chewed on his bottom lip. He supposed the cloth was too cold. He wiped quickly across Steve’s collarbones, the collarbones of Shakespearean heroines, and stood up, taking the cloth to the sink. “They comin’ to Brooklyn?”

Bucky shrugged, and leant against the counter, pruned hands in his pockets. “Not that I heard, but I wouldn’t rule it out. Mainly Manhattan’s what I heard. We can’t be too sure, we ain’t to know really.” He straightened back up, and grabbed the paper from the small round table in the corner. The leg was wobbly again. He’d sort it out tomorrow. “They ain’t that interesting really, just a couple’a rich Brits coming on a little adventure to see how us regular people live. The rich regulars of us. That’s it.” One hand in his pocket, the other holding the paper, he shrugged, and moved to the mattress, sitting down next to Steve, who lay boneless on his side, head filled with a cloudy haze, lips bitten red, and face dewy with water. Ophelia. He laughed to himself - was he Laertes or Hamlet? Ultimately, both to die by the same blade, same vicious poison, equally humble, arrogant, and angry. Bucky removed his boots from his feet, and brought his legs up upon the mattress, rolling his ankle until he felt a satisfying and audible pop, and Steve grimaced, his ankles one of the few parts he had never experienced serious pain from. “Habit I ain’t gonna kick, I’m afraid.” Bucky knocked Steve with his hip into his shoulder blades, and a silent laugh vibrated through the S of Steve’s spine. “Arthritis, I know, Stevie, you don’t gotta tell me again!” Steve made an indignant noise, and let his blue-green lids cover the sky blue of his irises.

“You gonna read me the newspaper, or what? I got places to be.” Spoke Steve in his hoarse, throaty voice, gravelly from the phlegm coating his chest, that despite the implications of his sickness, gave Bucky twitches from within his briefs. Bucky smirked, and hit his roommate on the golden crown of his head with the rolled up copy of the Times, and lay down, head against the propped up pillow. Steve turned, eyes open, though lids low, and pushed up to the other pillow, closer to Bucky, and head level with his chest, his breath warm on his damp skin.

Bucky licked his lips, and held the newspaper out, over his crotch, and stared down at Steve, who, to a stranger would appear, curled into Bucky. “You got a date I don’t know about?” The corners of Steve’s mouth lifted, and his head shook a small amount. “Close your eyes and listen up, you punk.”

His voice was steady, his hands did not shake, but as Steve’s head dropped onto his bicep on page three, his pitch faltered, the top of the newspaper fell towards him, and he breathed in. He would not move until Steve turned, and he let the paper naturally fold upon his lap, his arm falling softly, fingers tracing the long, elegant hands of Steve, whose snores were quiet and regular.

It was hot, but he was fine. He was content. And there, with Steve’s head upon his upper arm, he slept.

**Author's Note:**

> title from spanish sahara by foals. i will probably, maybe, write a follow up. i hope i do.
> 
> thank you for reading, i hope you enjoyed :*


End file.
